I was mad about the theatre growing up, really mad. We had a local theatre, the Torch, and I used to usher there. I would see the shows over and over again.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
I remember going to the theatre when I was little and the lights going down and just getting really scared about what was going to happen up there.
I love the immediacy of an audience being there and reacting. I'm spoiled, having grown up in theater.
Unless an entire row of people got up in the middle of a performance and left the theater in disgust, I felt as though I hadn't done my job.
It must have been an extraordinary time. I guess the worrying thing about musical theatre to me, is if you look at the London season this year, mine is actually the only one to have come in.
Though I acted in hundreds of productions, appeared at the Guthrie Theatre and on Broadway in Amadeus, I discovered in my thirties that I didn't really like stage acting. The presence of the audience, the eight shows a week and the possibility of a long run were all unnatural to me.
I don't come from an artistic family, so I didn't know what theater was. I was working on Wall Street in the '90s, and I went to see 'Appointment With a High-Wire Lady' at Ensemble Studio Theatre, and it affected me so deeply. It changed everything I thought about the arts. I quit banking and became an actor.
A lot of my friends were a lot into theatre a lot earlier than I was. A lot of my friends were kids who were in The Broadway Kids and the kids auditioning for Gavroche in 'Les Miz.' I was never that kid. I was weaned on Michael Jackson. Not literally, because that would have been odd.
I just realized at some point that I was hopelessly in love with the theater. I fought it for a long time because I thought theater was for, you know, insufferable actors.
I had given up the theater and everything propelled me into entertainment. And I didn't resist it.
I liked the theater. I liked the people. I liked the time that we worked.